April 24th, Planning Committee: Some Commentary

If you haven't read the last three posts, they are useful background to this one. I separated this out from the quick meeting summary to make it clear that these are my (admittedly rather pointed) opinions.

Presuming the current enabling legislation passes, all five members of this committee are going to serve on the City of Albany Comprehensive Plan Board, and the board will be chaired by committee chair Dan Herring. That means that the personalities and quirks of committee members, especially their style of participating in meetings, and the dynamics between them are going to affect the process considerably. It is for this reason that I offer the observations below. They have a hard job. What follows should be taken as constructive critique, and nothing personal:

• Dan Herring (Ward 13). I've spoken with Herring one-on-one about this process and it's clear that he believes in it and wants it work. He deeply wants to be able to talk about practical questions, such as what is the ideal size for a planning board so that it is representative without getting unwieldly, without having to dip into the ugliness of Albany politics, citizen distrust of the mayor, etc. This is understandable, and to some extent the high road is a good idea here (more on that later). But it also means he's susceptible to becoming frustrated with the process and its inevitable messiness. For example, in the process of making a very good point in response to some citizen comments, he called the concerns raised "not real." In trying to move to a vote despite Cathy Fahey's various concerns, he repeatedly said things like "I'm not willing to change my legislation any further." Even in the face of genuine frustration, such impatience and impoliticness will not stand Herring in good stead when trying to chair a much larger and more diverse body through uncharted and occasionally tedious waters, nor when trying to generate an air of openness to public direction. It's very hard to run a meeting and simeltaneously participate—this is why professional facilitators exist, and the board might want to consider using one for crucial meetings, at least until a consultant (who will presumably be selected to have these skills) is hired.

• James Sano (Ward 9). Sano began the evening with the good idea to send the contents of the public comment period from this meeting to the new board so that it would start off on the right foot with some of the public input. But later on, in arguing against suggestions to add more detail to the legislation, he revealed how his vision of the board's composition differed from that of many people in the audience. Time frames and other things wouldn't need to be specified, he said, because the applicants would have experience with such processes, and the council could look at resumes and select for people who knew what they were doing.
    Those priorities would in no way generate a board representative of the city. The board's public members should be articulate, passionate about the city, and representative of key constituencies; planning experience can come from our planning department and the hired consultants. Besides, practically no one in the city actually has first-hand experience with a municipal comprehensive plan. Upon reflection, I doubt Sano would actually argue with this, but his knee-jerk reaction is a reminder that a truly public-led process is just not the default, which is why so many people feel the need to keep harping about it.

• Carolyn McLaughlin (Ward 2). McLaughlin had perhaps the most optimistic commentary of the evening, waxing poetic at one point about how it was clear that people didn't want a plan that would gather dust on a shelf. "We're very good at putting out reports," she said, acknowledging the skepticism one commenter had expressed, but predicted that this would be different. People are afraid of change, she noted, but it can also be exciting.
    Like Sano, however, McLaughlin will need to examine her habitual responses if this is going to be a truly different process. In speaking of the reapportionment taskforce she served on, at one point she said "We held a meeting in every single ward. How much more accessible can you get?" She meant it to be a rhetorical question, but there are quite a few answers to it. Just being nearby doesn't necessarily make a meeting accessible. How thorough was the outreach? Were they all at the same time of day? How could people who couldn't make the one in their ward find out what happened and submit comments? Talk to anyone who has participated in a successful community planning process of any kind, and they will tell you it takes hundreds of meetings, with every conceivable group and constituency. Not hundreds of formal public hearings, certainly, and it's great to commit to having those in each ward, but the accessibility of the process is best measured in the outcome. To do it right will take admitting that it is not easy, and it has rarely been fully done right in the past.

• Cathy Fahey (Ward 7). Fahey took on the difficult role of the minority voice raising questions, especially points made repeatedly by members of the public, when the majority wanted to pass the darn thing and be done with it. Good for her. The points she and Shawn Morris raised about giving the committee a time frame and some structural guidance were good ones, and it will probably not be a pretty sight to see the new board trying to get itself organized with as little guidance as it was given. On the other hand, Fahey muddled the issue and provided fuel to the other committee members' impatience by indulging in a prolonged whine about the lack of information provided to the committee by the planning department, and by insisting on proposing clearly inappropriate additions that dealt with highly specific items of content (like potential flooding due to global warming) rather than just structure. It may not make sense for the board to set its own deadline, but the whole point of the people who keep talking about a public process is that the content of the plan should be driven bottom up, not prescribed ahead of time, even by champions of the public. Fahey should pick her battles more carefully.

• John Rosenzweig (Ward 8). Rosenzweig has served on the board of zoning appeals, so he must have some thoughts about planning, public process, and related notions, but he largely stayed quiet this time. His one substantive comment sounded like he'd written it down and practiced it like a campaign speech—something about eagerly anticipating the process to come and getting to "meet people in their own neighborhoods" (their native habitats?). Presumably along the way we will get to see something more beneath that smooth surface.

Luckily, they—and we—will all have a lot of chance to practice our meeting skills before this process is over.

Comments

[hawkny]

There isn't a single person associated with this endeavor who knows the first thing about current trends, best practices or theory in urban planning. This includes the two individuals (kids, actually) recently appointed as commissioner and deputy commissioner at the economic development & planning agency. IMO, this is nothing more than a sham exercise designed to give elected people some exposure in a public forum other than the twice-a-month charade that goes on down at city hall.

[Miriam Axel-Lute]

It's true there's not a lot of experience going around, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. People who fancy themselves "experts" are often blind to patterns that they don't expect to see. (And, for the record, Youngstown's award-winning planning effort was led by a couple of 29-year-olds.) I'd rather have a committed but inexperienced listener than an arrogant planner any day. Whether we'll have those is not yet clear.

On the other hand, of course, I respect the field of planning and there's a lot of good information, best practices, etc. out there that we would be crazy not to tap into. It's not always clear if people know how much they don't know. I think it's good that they've gone with the model of a special board and hiring a consultant, rather than letting the planning board be the lead agency. It shows some acknowledgement that they need to draw on the knowledge of others.

Also, we will have the Sustainable Design Assessment Team charette this summer (probably), which will bring in a team of people picked especially for their insights into issues Albany is facing, and have them meet with the public.

It's always good to keep the skeptic's hat at the ready, but I don't think it's worth writing this off yet.